Diogenes of Sinope is maybe closer? He was sort of a living meme and there's a significant volume of apocryphal anecdotes of hijinks and pseudepigraphical writings, going on long after his death.
It has been argued that Sam Simons was the one that really honed in the characters of The Simpsons. Groening would throw out all kinds of weird ideas, like Marge was secretly a rabbit (thus the high hair), but Simons kept grounding the characters back into a form of reality.
I always found it relevant that in Spanish-dubs they translate the name of Homer to "Homero" which would be basically how you would refer to the classic author rather than to some american layman. (as if e.g. in France I translated Homer as Homère instead of plainly Homer).